


lord, we are all cinders

by WhiteLadyoftheRing



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-07 23:13:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11069073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteLadyoftheRing/pseuds/WhiteLadyoftheRing
Summary: Jack is hungover the first time he meets Daniel Sousa.





	lord, we are all cinders

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glorious_spoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/gifts).



**_lord, we are all cinders_ **

_... from a fire burning long ago_

 

 

Jack is hungover the first time he meets Daniel Sousa. 

It's his first day at the SSR, and he's coming off a three day bender. No-one would ever suspect; he's more than perfected the art of looking calm and collected – suit neatly pressed, not a hair out of place –  while inside he's falling apart. The lights are too bright and his head is pounding so hard he doesn't hear the man calling for him to hold the elevator until it's almost too late. 

Jack catches the door as the man lurches to do the same, and instead winds up tumbling inside. The stack of files he'd been carrying flies out of his hand, and a metal crutch clatters to the floor. For a moment, Jack considers helping pick up the mess, but the instant he so much as tilts his head forward his vision flashes white at the edges and he decides against it. 

"You're the new guy, huh?" The other man collects the files, kneeling awkwardly while the elevator begins to move. "Thomas, right?" 

"Thompson. Lieutenant Jack Thompson." 

"Daniel Sousa." Sousa hauls himself up by the crutch. He's shorter than Jack, with dark hair and dark eyes, and he's wearing a ridiculous yellow sweater vest that makes Jack's eyes sting. 

(He's beautiful.) 

"You fight?" asks Jack. It's a formality; it's written on Sousa's face as plain as it's written on his own. 

"Yes," he says, as if that's all there is to the question. "You?" 

"Japan." The elevator doors open, revealing the bullpen – a couple dozen men working at desks, answering phones. It feels like a dream, like some relic from the distant past. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sousa staring at him. 

"Well, Jack, welcome to the SSR." 

. 

Weeks later, Jack pulls Sousa's personnel file. 

There isn't much else to do, he reasons. After all, this is a wartime agency scrambling to keep its footing in a peacetime world. They're soldiers, all of them; soldiers without a war. Sometimes he feels like they've all been sent here to toil away because they couldn't cope with the real world again, as if they needed the structure and the titles and the guns to keep themselves from falling apart. Chief Dooley's Home for Wayward Soldiers. 

Sousa's file is deceptively thin; no details about his military service beyond a footnote - _"Army. Sgt. Medical discharge."_ Maybe the SSR's a clean slate for everyone then. 

They've hardly said two words to one another since the elevator. Jack is Dooley's pet, handed the best assignments from day one while Daniel's been here for months, stuck making coffee and taking the lunch orders. 

It isn't fair, but if there's one lesson to learn from war, it's that life never is. 

. 

"Sousa," Jack calls out, before he can lose his nerve, "you wanna grab a drink?" 

It's nearly eight and the night shift has settled in, even as a handful of men from the day shift lag behind. That's one thing Jack's noticed around here: no one really leaves when their shift is up. 

Sousa stares at him for a long moment, as if waiting for the punchline. 

"I promise that report will still be there in the morning.” 

It isn't much of an argument, but somehow it works.  

In true New York fashion, the bar is tiny and wildly overpriced, but it's close by and they stock the top shelf bourbon Jack used to sneak from his father's stash when he was a boy. It isn't the place he's gone with the other guys from the office; even he's not sure if it's intentional. 

Daniel is quiet, almost wary. He isn't exactly the most popular guy in the office, even if Dooley seems to have a soft spot for him at times, and Jack has never seen him go out with the guys after work before, always staying behind to keep working. His job defines him, but maybe being the resident workaholic sounded more appealing than being the resident cripple. Jack imagines that he's waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

He's wearing another one of those god awful sweater vests, argyle this time. He looks ridiculous in the best of ways, with his tie loose and his hair tousled. He traces his fingertip along the edge of his glass.  

 “You don't get out much. Do you, Sousa?” 

Daniel stills, the tip of his middle finger poised on the edge of the glass. “ Maybe I'm not good company,” he says stiffly. “Not really a fan of reliving the so-called glory days.” 

“Neither am I,” says Jack, not quite meeting Daniel’s eyes. It was that moment, when they first met, when Jack was hiding his misery behind his shiny golden boy persona, that had endeared Daniel to him so. Ever since the war, no one seems to care about anything more than battle stories and military decorations. It's refreshing, a great windfall, to talk to someone that doesn't give two shits about the Navy Cross, who doesn't want to hear him tell the story. 

. 

After the war, the concept of privacy and modesty seems ridiculous at best. And yet, walking in on Sousa in the locker room is enough to leave him blushing and stammering like a schoolboy. He covers it up with a joke, averting his eyes so as not to stare. 

Daniel's leg has, indeed, been amputated. Just above the knee, in fact. Jack doesn't feel repulsed by it, nor does he feel the need to stare dumbly at it. He's known more than one man to lose a limb on the battlefield, and he much prefers the sight of scars and awkward prostheses to the desperate, helpless horror of watching one of his men bleed out in his arms. 

It's seeing Daniel that makes his breath hitch and his heart race. He's in his shorts and undershirt, sitting on the bench while he methodically cleans the prosthetic leg. Daniel, without the armor of his sweater vest and good boy attitude. With his hair coming undone, curling with sweat. By all other standards he looks disgusting – coated with the dirt and refuse of the dumpster he and Krzeminski were tasked with combing for evidence. 

"I know you're dedicated to your work and all, Sousa, but this is going a bit far." 

Daniel sighs, and looks evenly at Jack, almost daring him to make a comment about the leg. "Krzeminski's got a bad back, so I drew the short straw." 

"Tough luck." Jack moves to duck out of the locker room, completely ignoring why he'd come in the first place. "You know you don't have to do this, Sousa. Take all the cheap shots just to prove you're not less of a man." He knows it's a lie, but he thinks it's what Daniel needs to hear. 

Daniel is quiet for a long moment, and Jack's about to leave when he finally says, "But I do." 

"Yeah, maybe," Jack concedes. "But you shouldn't have to." 

. 

Buzzing on alcohol, Jack can't manage to put the pieces together – can't figure out how this has managed to happen. But it happens nonetheless. 

Jack is drunk the first time he kisses Daniel Sousa. 

Not mind-numbing drunk, not I-don't-want-to-feel-anything drunk, not even just-past-tipsy drunk. Not so drunk that he isn't fully aware of what he's doing. He's buzzed. Giddy. High. 

They're walking to the subway from the same overpriced bar that serves the same top shelf whiskey that he would sneak from his dad's liquor cabinet as a kid. It's raining – in New York City, a guarantee that there won't be any cabs tonight. He's forgotten his hat somewhere, and Daniel's umbrella has already blown itself inward, and they're soaked to the bone. 

"I hear we got some broad coming to the office next week," he says. "New secretary, I guess." 

Daniel pushes damp curls back from his forehead. "Jack, you can't call them 'broads' at work." 

"Why not?" Jack steps off a curb and into a puddle, water pooling into his shoes. 

"It's just not what you do." Daniel manages to avoid the puddle, stepping further out into the street. "And I don't think she's a secretary." 

"An agent?" Jack snorts. "I know there were women agents during the war, but it's over now. They can go back to kissing babies and baking moon-pies or whatever they did before." 

Daniel snorts too. "You're drunk," he says. "And also an asshole." 

"Yes, I am." 

They make their way slowly down the subway steps. Jack lets Daniel set the pace, walking only one or two steps ahead. The stairs and railing are slick, and they almost _both_ go crashing down the rest of the way when Daniel's prosthetic leg slides out from under him and he falls headlong into Jack. Jack catches him, staggering on his unsteady and drunk-heavy legs until the world stops spinning and they're holding onto one another's arms. 

"Sorry," they both say at once. 

And then Jack closes the distance and kisses Daniel softly on the mouth. He's never kissed another man before, no matter how much he's wanted to. 

It's the stupidest, bravest, most reckless, _best_ thing he's ever done.  

“Jack— ” 

Jack steps away from Daniel, his hands ghosting over the wet wool of the other man’s coat. “Sorry, I – slipped.” 

Daniel looks down into the empty station, then up the stairs to where the water is pouring down. “This is a terrible idea,” he says, giving Jack no opportunity to respond before pulling him in by the lapels and kissing him back. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song, "Level Up" by Vienna Teng.


End file.
